London

Some 35 000 overseas British citizen of Asian origin living in east Africa are to be granted the right to settle in Britain, Home Secretary David Blunkett told Wednesday’s Guardian newspaper.

Three North African men have been arrested and charged over an alleged plot to release cyanide gas in London’s Underground rail system.

Conservationists deplored a decision yesterday to allow Namibia, South Africa and Botswana to sell off up to 30 tons of their legally held ivory stockpiles.

Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who has been accused of war crimes by his critics, was yesterday appointed by George Bush to head the investigation into the September 11 attacks.

America’s oldest senator ever, Strom Thurmond, who was born before aeroplanes and was considered too old to fight in the second world war, fulfilled his last ambition yesterday, celebrating his 100th birthday while still in office.

Disgraced British politician and best-selling novelist Jeffrey Archer, currently serving a four-year jail term for perjury, has struck a multi-million-pound deal to write three books.

SABMiller Plc, the world’s second-biggest brewer, said on Tuesday that earnings continued to grow despite some tough markets, giving its shares a boost, but brewing industry analysts were not all impressed.

The Iraqi National Congress was to meet Friday in London with former army officers, opponents of President Saddam Hussein and a US official to discuss ways of toppling his regime.

Helen has not heard from her parents for two years since they left El Salvador to work illegally in the United States. She has run away from her aunt’s house to live with a gang. ‘My parents think I’m a little angel,’ she says, making horns with her fingers above her head, ‘but really I’m a little devil.’ She is 13 and she has already killed a man.

President George Bush last night said he was confident that the vote will be held today on a UN resolution that would disarm Saddam Hussein by seeing the return to Iraq of the weapons inspectors as early as the week after next.

Police in South Africa raided homes of suspected white militants across the country yesterday in the biggest security sweep since terrorists started a bombing campaign to destabilise the government.

The Russian government may claim its use of fentanyl, a heroin-like chemical 100 times more potent than morphine, was unavoidable in the circumstances of the Moscow hostage crisis.

Iraq has military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, Britain said on Tuesday in a dossier of evidence about Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq stepped up its charm offensive towards the United Nations weapons inspectors yesterday by quickly letting them into one of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad palaces when they turned up for a surprise search.

A little way off the Californian coast, near the island of San Clemente, the men of the USS Constellation’s squadrons were last week going through their paces to ready themselves for war.

Ariel Sharon’s minority government survived a series of no-confidence votes in the knesset last night, only to be confronted by a fresh challenge that left the hardline administration looking highly unstable.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard told BBC radio on Wednesday that Zimbabwe should be fully suspended from the Commonwealth.

In May 1962, a little-known band called the Beatles were playing in Hamburg’s Star Club when they received a telegraph from their manager Brian Epstein in London: ”Congratulations, boys, EMI requests recording session. Please, rehearse new material”.

South African Breweries agreed on Thursday to buy Miller Brewing from Philip Morris in a ,6-billion deal.

Indonesian police have released sketches of three suspects believed to have planted the bombs that destroyed two nightclubs in Bali and killed nearly 200 people.

A Paris court yesterday cleared Michel Houellebecq, the enfant terrible of French letters, of provoking religious and racial hatred by calling Islam ”the most stupid of religions”.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein plans to pay Libya billions of dollars to secure political asylum for his family and senior members of the Baghdad regime in the event of a war with the West.

The world’s top nuclear inspector said yesterday that it may take 12 months to discover whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction — a view that is likely to irritate Washington hawks.

The hoarse, breathless voice of Osama bin Laden knocked the White House back on the defensive yesterday at a time when it is trying to focus national attention on a looming confrontation with Iraq.

Drug manufacturers are set to launch sexual pick-me-ups that will last from Friday night to Sunday morning. The weekend sex drugs — to be launched next year — will have the same impact as Viagra, but will have effects that will last for days, not hours.

Police in Britain arrested more than 30 suspected Internet paedophiles in a swoop targeting computer users accessing pay-per-view child sex websites based in the United States.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said that he felt ”a degree of compassion” for young Palestinian suicide bombers, a day after one blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 19 Israelis.

The scene is set for psychoanalysis. The comfortable sofa is oatmeal. A box of tissues is within easy reach, held in place by two wooden dolls — one crying, the other with its arms crossed, sulking. A collection of ethnic masks hangs grimacing from a wall.

The beauty queens had only been gone a few hours, forced to flee Nigeria by raging violence. But as the Rev Joseph Hayab raised his hands to preach in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, thoughts of Miss World were an eternity away.